


Red

by TheGreatCatsby



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blackfrost - Freeform, Blood, F/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 13:12:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatCatsby/pseuds/TheGreatCatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha is dripping red, but Loki's drowning in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

The first time Loki appears, Natasha tries to shoot him. The bullet goes right through him and embeds itself in the wall. 

A chill works its way up her spine. Loki smirks at her, solid and yet not, like a ghost. 

“What do you want?” she asks. 

Loki disappears and the next morning she wonders if it was a dream. 

**

Loki next appears on a mission. Natasha and Clint are fighting and when she stabs the last enemy in the chest and lets her fall, she looks up and sees him standing there, watching her. She takes a step forward, and he disappears. 

Later she asks Clint, “Did you notice anything strange about that last fight?” 

“No,” he says, munching on a slice of pizza. “You?” 

Natasha can’t eat. The pizza tastes like dust. “No,” she says. “Nothing.” 

Clint eyes her warily for a moment. He knows she’s lying. He won’t say anything because he’s Clint, and he does the same thing. 

Natasha is grateful. 

**

Loki appears three more times in the next month, all during missions and battles. Twice, Natasha is fighting alongside the Avengers. Once, she is working on a mission for SHIELD. 

Loki always disappears, and he never says anything. 

She wonders if this is in her head. If she’s going crazy. She doesn’t ask Thor about Loki because she doesn’t want to know. He reappears and disappears as easily as a thought. He ingrains himself into her consciousness as easily as an idea. 

She could be seeing nothing but shadows. 

She can’t prove anything. 

She could be slipping. She could be recalling the battle of New York City and the aliens and that knife-sharp smile and green-blue eyes filled with rage but underneath that so empty. 

The stuff of nightmares. 

She is not slipping. She is fine. She can’t be anything else. 

**

Natasha wakes up with a start. 

She hasn’t been dreaming, a small blessing, but in the small room something is amiss. She sits up, one hand grabbing for the knife underneath her pillow. She blinks the darkness out of her eyes and looks around. 

He is there, by the window, facing away. 

“You keep appearing,” Natasha says. “What do you want?” 

“You are exquisite,” Loki says, and his voice is just as smooth and cultured as she remembered. 

“Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be in prison?” 

“Perhaps I should. Perhaps I am. You fight like a dancer. Did you know that?” 

“Why are you watching me fight?” Natasha asks. 

“You are more interesting than the rest,” Loki says. “More ruthless. More refined. More dangerous. You fight in many ways.” 

“You watch me because I’m interesting,” Natasha says blandly. 

“I should have taken you instead of the hawk,” Loki tells her, turning around. His eyes gleam with something. Excitement. 

“No,” Natasha says, pulling herself up from the bed and holding her knife tight in her hand. “What do you want?” 

“Nothing.” 

“You always want something.” 

Loki tilts his head to the side. “You think you know me.” 

“You’re not that hard to read,” Natasha says. “Your emotions are your undoing.” 

“Of course.” Loki inclines his head, mockingly. 

“Are you still in Asgard?” 

“No.” 

Shit, Natasha thinks. She wonders if Thor knows. “Where are you?” 

Loki smirks at her and she knows she won’t like what’s coming next. “Guess,” he says, and then disappears. 

**

“Loki’s here,” Natasha tells Clint the next day. Clint nearly drops his cup of coffee. “He told me so. He told me to find him.” 

“What are we waiting for?” Clint asks, actually standing up and searching for his bow and arrows. “Let’s kill that sonofabitch.” 

Natasha pushes her own coffee mug away. “I think he wants me to find him by myself.” 

Clint looks at her. “And why would you do that?” 

Curiosity, Natasha doesn’t say. “It makes it more likely that he won’t run.” 

“How’ll you find him without help?” Clint asks. 

“I’ve learned a thing or two from Stark about hacking,” Natasha tells him. He still looks distraught, so she adds, “I’ll tell you when I go.” 

“And when you come back,” Clint insists. 

Natasha nods. “That, too.” 

**

When she finds Loki, it turns out that he can’t run away. At first. 

She finds him in a facility run by an organization that claims to understand magic. What they plan on doing with it is beyond her, but she understands what they are doing at the moment. She infiltrates the facility and ends up in a room full of machinery and wires, all of which lead to the pale body on the steel table in the center of the room. 

Loki is wired up and his eyes are open and glassy but unseeing. The things attached to his body look to be non-invasive, aside from one needle stuck in the vein of his left arm dripping a steady supply of a clear liquid. Everything else seems to stick to the surface of his skin. Natasha considers the restraints keeping Loki in place. 

He looks awful. This does not escape her attention but she chooses to push it aside. She grabs his shoulder and gives it a harsh shake, and Loki gasps like a man breaking the surface of water for his first breath of air in a long, long time. He blinks and, chest still heaving, focuses on Natasha. Then he grins, slow and wide. 

“Don’t celebrate yet,” Natasha says. “Why didn’t you just say you needed help?” 

“And bring attention to myself from the likes of Thor and your team?” Loki croaks, voice hoarse. “No.” 

“How did you get here?” 

Loki grimaces. “I escaped. I was weak. There are those who would take advantage of a weakened sorcerer.” 

Natasha fingers one of the things attached to Loki’s skin. She follows the wire to a strange pod, which glows from within. And then she understands. 

These people are draining Loki’s magic and storing it. 

Natasha turns back to Loki, who is watching her intently. 

“Why should I free you?” 

Loki sighs, exasperated. “Aside from the concern you should feel given that a group of mortals with questionable motives has found a way to store magic for a purpose yet unknown to anyone, I would wager that you are just as interested in my nature as I am in yours.” 

Natasha keeps her face carefully blank. “Does it hurt?” she asks. 

Loki’s expression darkens, but he says nothing. 

“Good,” Natasha says. “I should leave you like this for what you’ve done. It’s no less than what you deserve.” 

“What do any of us deserve?” Loki asks softly. 

She doesn’t want it to cut deep, but it does. 

She is different. She is not him. Loki is her gone terribly wrong, not given the choice of redemption or, perhaps, the version of her that did not take it. Natasha may be dripping red but Loki is drowning in it. 

“If I let you go you’ll hurt people,” she says. “You’ll hurt Thor.” 

“Perhaps,” Loki says. “I can never promise not to hurt Thor.” 

“Why?” 

“We do what we feel we must.” 

Natasha considers this. He will run and he will hurt and destroy. 

If she doesn’t do this, it might gnaw away at her. The blood dripping from her ledger might become a steady stream. 

“I will hurt you,” Natasha says. “The next time I see you—“ 

“I look forward to it,” Loki tells her. 

Natasha pulls the first wire from Loki’s skin. It comes away after some effort, sticky residue clinging to the small area of Loki’s chest. She pulls the rest off, one-by-one, and doesn’t comment on how Loki relaxes inch-by-inch, how he sighs with relief as the last piece comes away and she starts at his restrains and, finally, pulls the needle from his vein. 

He sits up, rubbing his chilled skin gingerly, only a cloth covering his legs. He glances at the pods holding his magic, then makes his way towards them and makes them disappear, one-by-one. Then he turns to Natasha and smiles. 

“Until we meet again,” he says, sketching a low bow, and then he’s gone. 

Natasha tells Clint that he ran away. 

**

Loki decides to strike where Thor will find him: Stark Tower. 

He manages to break in and steal an arc reactor before the Avengers are alerted and spring into action. 

Loki dodges attacks and shouts insults to Thor and the others, and he stays. He could leave, but he stays, arc reactor in hand even though he could vanish it, and Natasha knows this is an act, perhaps of revenge, aimed at Thor. 

“This is a thing of no consequences,” Loki says, “but I shall use it to gain a greater price. Tell me, has the Allfather been guarding the Tesseract well?” At which point, Thor lunges at him and Loki dodges the blow. 

There is something strange about Loki in his fight with Thor. Natasha doesn’t understand it, but as she watches the others engage she falls back. She swears she sees Loki flicker—

And a cool hand brushes her shoulder. 

Natasha whips around and embeds a knife in Loki’s stomach. 

Loki’s eyes widen, but he grins, unbalanced, and holds something in his hands. Something round, and glowing. At first she thinks it is the arc reactor, but then she realizes that it is different. A pod. 

“A gift,” he murmurs. 

“You think that makes up for this?” Natasha asks, and she twists the knife. Loki buckles and she forces him back into the nearest wall. 

“The horrors never go away,” he murmurs, eyes sparkling. 

No. 

Natasha pulls the knife out of Loki’s stomach and presses it against his throat. 

“I can kill you.” 

“That would solve nothing,” he says. “Besides, it is poor thanks for my gift.” 

“You tried to give me a gift by trying to hurt my team,” Natasha says. “None of them ever wanted to see you again.” Except Thor. Right now, Thor doesn’t matter. 

“I can be nothing else,” Loki says. 

Natasha presses the knife harder into the skin. “The lies you tell yourself,” she murmurs. 

“Don’t we all,” Loki says, and they are close. Impossibly close. He is close and powerful but she is powerful, too. One could get drunk off the tension between them, ready to be cut at a moment’s notice by Natasha’s knife. 

“I could raise the alarm right now,” she says, quietly.

“Then do it,” Loki tells her. “I prefer this be kept between you and I, but you are free to do as you choose.” 

Natasha feels a flash of anger. Loki is in front of her, blood dripping from a stomach wound onto the floor (a river of red) and still he believes he has the upper hand. He is testing her. He thinks he can win. 

“Of course,” she says. She runs the knife gently across his throat, drawing blood, a small injury. Loki shudders. “One might think you want to be punished.” 

Loki’s eyes flash. “Not all of us can be paragons of virtue.” 

“Right.” Natasha flicks the knife, blood arcing off the blade to land on Loki’s face, stark red against pale white, and then she drives the knife home in-between Loki’s ribs. Loki gasps and coughs, blood staining his lips bright red. 

Natasha moves forward, knife still embedded in Loki’s chest, grating against his bones, and whispers, “That’s for all the shit you put me through, for the shit you put my team through.” Loki groans, and Natasha moves a fraction of an inch to the side, and brushes her lips against his. “And this is an opportunity.” She can taste the copper blood on her lips, his staining her own. He’s drowning in it. 

He will live. 

“Make a choice,” she says, and pulls away. 

Loki gives her a wild, bloodstained smile and disappears, leaving the glowing pod on the floor. 

Natasha picks it up. It feels warm in her hand. 

Magic.


End file.
